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by ncfan
Summary: Zuko sees her, the phantom of her last smile. His eyes snap open with a start. He hasn't thought of her in months.


This is set during 'Zuko Alone.' I own nothing.

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The sun beats down on Zuko's back, unforgiving as it has never been; that from which he draws his strength has turned on him at last. The back of his neck, the tender pale skin unprotected by his rough straw hat or short, bristly hair (how long has it been since he last allowed his hair to grow? Zuko can't remember hair making his scalp itch so badly before) is burned and raw. It stings and screams when he moves his head even slightly.

Will there ever be an end to these dry, cracked lands? His ostrich horse is badly in need of food, and the waterskin is empty of even the last drop of water. Zuko's throat is as dry and cracked as the earth beneath him. His tongue is thick and swollen in his mouth.

The gentle swaying of his mount, the infernal heat, his terrible thirst, all of that presses down on him at once, and his eyes are drooping, all is going black…

Out of the darkness, Zuko sees her. No, more than sees her—_feels _her. A swish of long brown hair and long red robes. The scent of perfume and the fragrant herbs she put in her wardrobe to keep her clothes smelling sweet. The phantom of her last smile.

Zuko's eyes snap open with a start. He blinks, once, twice, three times, rubs his eyes and comes away with dampness that is surely sweat and nothing else. There's surprise written in the staccato beating of his heart. He hasn't thought of her in months.

-0-0-0-

Later, he has the bitter taste of defeat from victory caught in his mouth, too familiar to be foe or friend or anything but a part of himself, as the fire that roars in his blood at all hours is a part of himself. With that bitter taste in his mouth, Zuko finds himself longing for the thirst he had felt before.

He is lying beneath a sky full of stars, resting his head on his shoulders. The heat dissipates at night here, leaving a dry coolness that evaporates the sweat on his skin and leaves his skin feeling tight and compressed. At such a time, when Zuko is lying awake beneath the stars, trying to find some sleep on the side of the road… At such a time, he longs for home. There isn't a time when he doesn't.

Zuko blinks furiously and traces the patterns of the constellations, what constellations he can remember. In the months and years spent on the road, especially the ones spent at sea, Uncle didn't just try to teach him more advanced firebending. _"We are on a ship in the middle of the ocean, Prince Zuko, far from home. If anything happens to our maps, it could be that the stars will be all we have to guide us."_

Iroh tried to teach his nephew the patterns of the stars, their travels across the skies as the year lengthened and waned. He tried to teach him of the brilliant white star that rose after the sun in the evening, and before it with the dawn. He tried to teach him of the red star whose movements across the heavens were so erratic. And Zuko tried to learn, really, he did. But all the stars ran together in his head, and he was far more interesting in learning as much about firebending as he could.

Now, Zuko wishes that he had paid better attention to his uncle's lessons, wishes that he had put more effort into learning—if stars could provide a map over water, they could do the same over land, and it would have given him something to do, these tired nights. It would give him something to do, when sword practice can't clear his head and firebending practice will only attract even more trouble than he's already found.

He wishes, sort of, and would never admit as much aloud, that he hadn't left his uncle behind.

Zuko wishes for a lot of things.

_Are we really so hated? _he wonders. _Is the Fire Nation so hated by everyone else that a firebender's presence in an Earth Kingdom town can incite fury? Am _I _really so hated, that the mere mention of my name can turn an entire town against me? So hated, that even people who thought well enough of me before don't want anything to do with me anymore?_

_I saved the boy. I saved Lee. It was the only thing I could do. I gave him that knife, the knife Uncle gave me so many years ago. It was my fault those thugs took him. I couldn't let them hurt him; I _had _to get him back. But I think… I think I might have done it even if it wasn't my fault he was in that fix to start with._

Zuko gave Lee the knife Iroh had given him, pointed out the inscription to him: _'Never give up without a fight.'_ He can barely say why he did it, can barely name the reason. Maybe the sight of the scrawny boy trying to use his swords out in the field that night, before Zuko set him straight, had fired off a spark in his core. Maybe Lee just reminded him of the boy he'd once been, as different as they were.

And then Lee had turned his back, just the same as everyone else. _Well, that just figures._

"_Never forget who you are," _she had said to him, the last words he ever heard her say. Zuko remembers those words. He's tried to live by them, Ursa's last words to her beloved son, but look where they've gotten him. Look where his efforts have led him. Down to ruin, as all his efforts must.

He shifts his weight and sighs, hot angry breath clouding on his cheeks, the marred and the unmarred. Mom was there, and then she wasn't. She wasn't dead—there was no corpse; at least, the corpse that _was _there certainly wasn't hers. She wasn't dead, just gone, like she had never been there to start with. No one of a station to address the young Prince directly would speak of missing Ursa, wife of Ozai, mother of Zuko and Azula, no one except Iroh, but he hadn't even been there when she vanished, so it wasn't like he could shed any light on the matter.

The years wore on, and while no one would speak _directly _of Ursa, there were plenty of people willing to speak _indirectly _of her. The servants hushed up quite nicely at the approach of Prince Zuko, but he learned to be quiet, to eavesdrop, to be devious like Azula, even if only in this respect. Eavesdropping was just another form of hiding.

Zuko heard what they said, what they speculated, in the kitchens as they cleaned the dishes, in the gardens as they pruned the flower bushes. The Lady has taken her own life, and her husband buried her in secret, ashamed of the dishonor she brought upon them by doing so. The Lady has absconded with a paramour. The Lady has carried Fire Nation secrets to the Earth Kingdom. And don't you think it's strange, that the late Fire Lord Azulon passed away almost at the same time that the Lady disappeared?

He listened to the rumors, and each one made them angrier than the last. It was directed at nothing and no one in particular, or perhaps what it was directed at was too close and too personal for Zuko to have the eyes to see it. His anger mounted inside of him like a banked fire whose flames were too hot for the coals, feeding, feeding, feeding, until it exploded and he was on the ground one day after practice nursing a burned arm, red and raw and hot. Then, Uncle was standing over him, prying the truth out of him even as he called for a physician to see to his nephew's burn, and made him promise never to listen any of the rumors regarding his mother again. And for once, Zuko did what his uncle told him, not only without complaint, but gladly, grateful to be given an excuse not to listen.

Then, came the exile.

_What did I think? _Zuko wonders. _What was I thinking?_

_I remember._

Yes, Zuko remembers. His face was still swathed halfway in bandages, all of his hair apart from the topknot shaved away to keep it from getting in the wound. The pain was intense for days and weeks, but eventually it gave way to a furious itch, and then finally to numb, scarred ridges of flesh, utterly unresponsive to touch and pulling at the still-living flesh of the rest of his face. In those days, his mind wandered, trying to escape the pain, and he thought of her.

_I used to think that, just as I was searching for the Avatar, I was searching for her, and that just as I would find him, I would find her. I looked over every hilltop, every cresting wave, behind every rock and tree, half-hoping I'd see Mom. I couldn't believe that was dead. She wasn't dead, just gone. I was sure I would find her some day. Maybe I'd walk into one of Uncle's beloved teashops, and she would be sitting at a table by the window, by herself. And we would look at each other, and I…_

The fantasies always stop there. Zuko doesn't like to think about what would happen next, the inevitable second act of their reunion. She would look at his face and gasp, horror in her eyes. Maybe there would be anger too, once Ursa learned the tale of how her son was scarred, but Zuko doesn't like it. He doesn't like the idea of her looking on him in pity, seeing not him, but only his numb, rigid scar, the dead flesh that reminds him of his dishonor.

Mother, what would you say if you could see your son now?

What would you say if you could see him sleeping on the side of a road, staring up at stars he can't even name, wondering about his life?

Would you be proud that he has tried so hard to find his path?

Or would you only weep, that he has yet to find it?

Now, Zuko tries not to think of Ursa. Those first months of his exile, when he imagined her behind every rock and tree are done with. She's not dead, just gone, but Zuko does not expect to see his mother again. If she's hiding, if she has truly fled the Fire Nation, she won't risk discovery, not even by her exiled son.

So he tries not to think of her, and focus solely on his quest to secure the Avatar. Thinking about Mom won't do him any good, so Zuko tries not to think of her. And he'd actually managed it, for months in fact, until recently. And now, as it is with such things, once he starts thinking about her, he can't stop.

_Hope is worse than despair, _Zuko can't help but think in such moments. _At least with despair, you've got nowhere else to sink. But as long as you still have hope, you have further to sink. So what would you say if you could see me here?_

He lingers in half-sleep, thinking, for one moment, that she who left him when he was half-asleep might return to him in the same state. But that's a fool's hope, Zuko knows. It will be a long day of travel ahead of him when the sun rises. He needs to get some sleep beneath the stars.


End file.
